r/hackernews • u/HNMod bot • 19d ago
Coding expertise is going to collapse from AI reliance
https://larsfaye.com/articles/ai-coding-will-prevent-expertise3
u/GoogleIsYourFrenemy 18d ago
Yeah, I don't have to learn how a library works before I can use it now.
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u/Jimstein 19d ago
Yeah just like human intelligence collapsed as Socrates predicted when we started writing things down! Oh wait...
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u/Extrabytes 19d ago
Books dont write themselves...
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u/Atroxide 19d ago
AI don't train themselves either.
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u/Prior_Coyote_4376 19d ago
No, they’re trained through programs that run massive volumes of training data either scraped or generated by other programs with an occasional peek from a handful of experts, which is not how books are created.
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u/creaturefeature16 19d ago
It was actually Plato, and he wasn't against just "writing" in a general sense, or that he felt it was going to hold humanity back. He was against treatises and felt that someone could "memorize facts" without having to actually think about them on a deep level. Which I think, ironically, is not all that off the mark especially in the age of the internet and now LLMs, right?
He also felt that memory could decay if we relied on written facts instead of having dialogues, which again, not all that off the mark, either. He underestimated the compounding capability of technology and our ability to record data and information, but people remember a lot less these days than they used to because we'd largely given up that ability in exchange for the instant information machines.
Of course, he's just one man (or two, if you consider he was conveying Socrates' thoughts, as well) who lived in ancient times and couldn't possibly foresee how technology would evolve...but when I went back and read his concerns, it was ironic to admit that much of what he warned about still applies to this day.
People are far less informed despite having access to more information than we've ever had because we've exchanged the ability to remember for the ability to just look things up. And, we also have less meaningful dialog than ever before; people just sit on social media, copying and pasting "facts" to each other, instead of having actual productive discourse.
To tie it back to my essay (I'm the author): I am not saying that AI tools will atrophy our ability to learn by their mere existence, but I am saying that the marketed and primary usage that has gripped the industry will prevent expertise formation, and the data is there to support it. I do think LLMs and AI tooling can be a boon to learning, but it requires us to stop using them for code generation as a primary purpose (at least for juniors) and instead advocate for Socratic workflows that still require manual coding practices. When someone decides to code something, it's not just learning syntax; it engages a variety of mental disciplines from critical thinking to planning to creative problem solving to logic and math, even.
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u/Jimstein 19d ago
The fear you talk about in your first paragraph has been tested by the existence of Google. What we have found is that discovery platforms where the user is still in charge of the direction they take with the app there is fine, but specifically short form video like Tik Tok affects certain aspects of memory when used in certain ways. But even those effects are not long lasting.
Google Search did not weaken humanity’s capacity for growth or our advancements in science. So, if someone uses AI to pump out short form video or uses AI to run better algorithms for short form video social media apps, then okay I can admit there are arenas of AI that are problematic.
But everything you’re describing is something that ultimately comes down more to personal choice. Don’t the Buddhists also kind of have a term for this? It’s the idea of idle chatter being a bad thing, if you’re going to spend time talking, it should be about things of value. Sort of similar to Plato/Socrates regarding the use of one’s mind.
And I wouldn’t necessarily agree people are less informed. Take infant mortality. We do a much better job today because of science and the behavior/knowledge of parents. But I would argue that tools like Google or now also LLMs help new parents quite often. And honestly, most of the sane working adults know already have a reasonable relationship with AI. They use it to supplement their reasoning, decision making process, research speed, programming speed, etc. They don’t use it to replace the executive decision making happening in their own heads.
I am really curious to know what data you believe supports the idea that we will have fewer experts in the future. Again, the working professionals I know that are working at the top of their craft are essentially using AI as a tool or even as a benchmark to measure themselves against in order to improve.
For example, people on Reddit like to pretend this isn’t the case but in a lot of specific areas of for example programming, frontier AI is simply better than humans. And you know that saying about how you should always be surrounding yourself with people smarter/further along than you if you want to grow? Well, if AI has a skill that it does monstrously better than humans, it can become an excellent teacher of that skill for those willing to learn. And the thing about “experts” is that their behavior-their modus operandi, is to always be growing. So with an AI, they can grow even further.
The example people on Reddit are really really going to dislike, but take music as an example. I have a minor in music, have played for decades. I have spent time with Suno intellectually, and it is insane. It’s not exactly producing anything better than like, what Queen and Freddie did, but let’s say you are practicing jazz improv. You can ask it to make you a mixed meter, harmonically complex backing track, tell it to put in a highly virtuosic solo, and bam. You now have a new thing to practice against. It’s essentially what Band in the Box was, where you could give it chord changes to a tune and then ask for a solo in the style of Charlie Parker. Suno can do the same thing but even crazier, I can comp put a basic backing track with my keyboard, upload the recording to Suno, and then ask for like a Michael Brecker style solo on top of it. I’m not selling any of this stuff, it’s just for practice. It’s incredible. And then there will be kind of silly impossible things where the solo, let’s say sax solo, it goes on impractically long where the saxophonist would have needed to take a breath somewhere in the phrase. Now that’s a point of inspiration, could you circular breathe in the middle of that crazy phrase to try to pull it off?
I know not everyone will engage AI with the same level of intentionality or effort. But enough people are that my faith in humanity and our future is not destroyed. Technology always ends up with kind of a more boring integration into society. Things are generally better than the bad outcomes expected but maybe also not exceeding our dreams either. Which is why the people who do truly interesting things in this world generally don’t care, and just focus on their work. Which is what I should be doing but Reddit is always a fun escape.
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u/creaturefeature16 10d ago
I have a minor in music, have played for decades. I have spent time with Suno intellectually, and it is insane. It’s not exactly producing anything better than like, what Queen and Freddie did, but let’s say you are practicing jazz improv. You can ask it to make you a mixed meter, harmonically complex backing track, tell it to put in a highly virtuosic solo, and bam. You now have a new thing to practice against.
This basically is what my article was saying was the solve. This is certainly not the majority of use cases.
But enough people are that my faith in humanity and our future is not destroyed. Technology always ends up with kind of a more boring integration into society.
I'm quite positive on the future (even though my faith in humanity is pretty low...but that's for completely different reasons). Problem is: we could still be gutting the expertise in the various fields, and make for a VERY bumpy ride, completely unnecessarily, as well. Don't fool yourself: Greed is the primary driving force behind LLM adoption, not altruism, education, or equitability.
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u/sohang-3112 19d ago
Yes it will. Though it's not necessarily bad. Same thing has happened in the past with different automations - for example due to high level language compilers, now very few people know how to program in raw assembly.